CEN20LA208 · Piper PA32 260
Piper PA32 260 · Accident: fire/smoke (non-impact) while standing
From Hector International Airport (FAR) to Park Rapids Municipal Airport Konshok Field (PKD)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN20LA208
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Piper PA32 260
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA32
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N3869W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hector International Airport (FAR), Fargo, NDTo Park Rapids Municipal Airport Konshok Field (PKD), Park Rapids, MN
- Aircraft age
- About 54 years (built 1966)
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Standing · engine(s) start-up
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Fire/smoke (non-impact)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor attempted to start the airplane for the instructional flight when the engine started and began to sputter a few seconds later. He moved the mixture control forward, but the engine quit. The instructor then saw black smoke emanating from the engine cowl. He continued cranking the engine in an attempt to draw the fire into the engine. The fire continued so the flight instructor ordered an evacuation of the airplane. The subsequent fire substantially damaged the engine compartment.
Postaccident examination of the engine revealed the highest intensity heat and fire was near the engine driven fuel pump. The fuel pump subsequently leaked when it was pressurized with fuel. It is likely the failure of the engine-driven pump allowed fuel to exit and become exposed to the hot engine, which caused the fire.
Probable cause
Failure of the engine driven fuel pump which led to a fuel leak and subsequent fire in the engine compartment.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN20LA208
- Event ID
- 20200603X74300
- Case number
- CEN20LA208
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: c9571f1b4485cc717509f5e52ad02e5c122cf2b29c1eef9e5dac84641ec66449; retrieved 2026-09-16T11:44:46.215Z.